Creativity Booster: 16 Squares

Activity

Warm up activities

Creativity Booster: 16 Squares

Diana Varma

Creativity Booster activities can be used as a fun warm up the beginning of each class. This ’16 Squares’ activity invites students to think visually and require creative problem solving.

Tech needed: Video conferencing, Paper / pens, Cameras off option

Synchronous

Accessibility: Visual, Auditory, Involves movement

Duration: 5-30 mins

Student preparation: None

Educator preparation: None

ACTIVITY PURPOSE

Creativity Boosters are short, purposeful activities used at the start of class to energise students and spark creative thinking. They work well as ice breakers and help students shift into learning mode. These activities can support both visually creative subjects (like design or visual arts-focused classes) and non-visual courses that involve creative problem solving (such as science, business, or social sciences).

There are different creativity boosters: some invite students to quiet and focus their minds, see ‘5 Senses‘, some invite students to discover feelings of empathy, see ‘An Ode to the Left Hand‘, some invite students to get silly and quiet their inner critics, see ‘Yes! Let’s.

USEFUL FOR

This activity encourages students to embrace ‘quantity’ over ‘quality’, silence their inner critics and remove the need for perfectionism in creative work, help students think visually (even in non-visual subjects) and showcase the concept that ‘constraint breeds creativity’.

This activity can be used to help any students who are trying to solve a problem. This might be a problem more traditionally solved through visual means (art or design), or a problem that would benefit from sketching ideas down on paper, however abstract this may be. This activity is like a workout for students’ creative brains; actively pushing students to come up with lots of new ideas in rapid succession. This activity might not be easy, but ‘running out of ideas’ is usually an illusion.

PREPARATION

No preparation is required other than having the instructions to guide students through the activity (see below), as well as asking students to have a pen or pencil and piece of paper (letter-sized / A4) ready. One stopwatch is also required.

INSTRUCTIONS

Ask students to take a letter-sized or A4 sheet of paper and instruct them to fold it twice one way and twice the other way to create 16 equal squares.
Explain the goal: generate 16 different ideas or drawings in 8 minutes (30 seconds per square).
Students should begin in the top-left square. On your signal, they start sketching an idea to help solve or explore their chosen problem.
After 30 seconds, let them know it’s time to move to the next square—even if their sketch is incomplete (this is expected).
Encourage students to keep going, even if they feel stuck or reluctant to leave a drawing unfinished. In each new square, they can either modify or build on a previous idea, or try something completely different.
Continue until all 16 squares are filled.
By the end of the 8 minutes, students may or may not have a workable solution to their problem, but more often than not this exercise sparks creative insights that weren’t there before the 16 squares.
End by reinforcing that sometimes prioritising ‘quantity’ over ‘quality’ is a strategic decision that can help overcome the equivalent to writers’ block.

DURATION

Approximately 10 minutes.

ADAPTATIONS AND EXAMPLES

Offer alternative format by providing a printable template or digital version (e.g. a Google Slide with 16 boxes) for students who may have difficulty folding or working with paper.
Allow students to write short ideas or descriptions instead of drawing if sketching is uncomfortable or inaccessible.
Let students use drawing apps or tablets if that’s more comfortable or engaging for them.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

No special technology is required beyond video conferencing software in a live, synchronous class. This activity works with either cameras turned on or cameras turned off.

USEFUL RESOURCES

Talk Paper Scissors podcast, Episode 058: Serious Fun. In this podcast episode, I explain the rationale behind the importance of having ‘Serious Fun’ in post-secondary education, including the incorporation of Creativity Boosters in my virtual classroom.